First Impressions

Does Dr. Ben really know how to run his practice growth?

Ben sat on the bench in the museum’s Impressionists room, staring at a giant canvas. His wife and son were strolling around the room, talking about details in the other paintings, and he knew that Carmen was having to focus so much on Jonathan that she probably wasn’t getting the full experience of being in an art museum.

But somehow he was having trouble getting out of his own thoughts enough to enjoy time with his family. Even surrounded by amazing works of art, he was thinking about work.

“Thinking about work?” Carmen asked, coming to a stop beside him. Jonathan climbed up on his lap. Ben had to laugh — it was uncanny how Carmen could read his thoughts sometimes.

Although it seemed as though he was always thinking about work lately. “I guess,” he admitted.

“I thought things were going well,” Carmen said, sitting beside him.

“They were. They are,” said Ben. “I just feel like every time I get my problems solved, they regroup and come back at me.”

“I try to strike the balance between honest and supportive.” Carmen darted a look at Ben. Jonathan, worn out from walking, was half asleep. “I think you don’t know as much about running your practice as you need to. Maybe not as much as think you do, even.”

Ben frowned. “That’s honest, okay. Maybe not supportive.”

“I’m not saying anything about how you treat your patients. I’m just saying it’s not really scalable.”

Ben looked inquiringly at his wife.

“Managing a small practice where you see a few patients a day is not the same as managing a growing practice. You want growth, of course, and you’re a great chiropractor, so you get more patients — and you have a crisis while you figure out how to serve them all. Then you add a partner or another staff member, and you have a crisis while you figure out how to pay for them and how to manage them. Then you get more patients so there’s enough money to go around, but then you have another crisis figuring out how to keep track of everything. Your practice grows, but you sort of go from crisis to crisis.”

Ben looked back at the peaceful flowers in the painting. From crisis to crisis was a pretty fair description of how he felt.

“We want growth,” he said. “We need it, even. We have to think about Jonathan’s future — lessons, sports, even college tuition. And we have to think about our retirement, and let’s face it, we want and deserve a certain kind of lifestyle. I don’t think that going back to the way things were my first year in practice is the solution. You’re right, though — I felt a lot more competent back in those days.”

“What about the technology solutions we’ve talked about. Have you invested in them, yet?”

“We’ve done a few things,” Ben said slowly. Now that he thought of it, though, a lot of the new tools they’d talked about were still being talked about.

“I know I couldn’t have handled the growth of the pizzeria if I was trying to make all my pizzas with a bowl and a wooden spoon,” Carmen said. “You need good tools.” She stood and stretched.

Ben picked up his sleepy son and put an arm around his wife. “I think I’ve had enough of the Impressionists,” he said. “But what you said definitely has made an impression on me.”

“Good,” Carmen smiled.

Does Dr. Ben really know how to run his growing practice?

Disclaimer: For HIPAA compliance, all characters appearing in this post are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons or actual events is purely coincidental.

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